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August 01, 2010

Suspense - The Digger

In "The Digger," Torin Thatcher stars as an engineer who faces his worst fears by returning to the mine that ruined him.

This Suspense episode has the distinct feel of an Escape story because Antony Ellis produced and directed, using Escape's storytelling format and regular actors. After Escape went off the air, Suspense was a vehicle for occasional "exotic adventure" stories and recycled Escape scripts, but "The Digger" was one of their more interesting forays into that genre.

As the episode opens, Mr. Cotton is in a remote jungle trading post looking for Roger Fabian, a man who used to be known as "The Digger." Fabian was once a successful mining engineer, but now he is drunk and unemployable. A mining accident in Tabora two years earlier, from which he was the only survivor, was the cause of his downfall.

Cotton finds Fabian and explains that he has come to offer him a job. The mine in Tabora is being reopened, and they need him back. Fabian resists, but ultimately, he agrees to return.

When Fabian arrives at the Tabora mine, he has more to deal with than just the terrors of his memories. The natives don't want to disturb the dead by reopening the mine, the area is swarming with rats, and the other man on the job wants to kill him.